Re: The Cinco De Mayo LOS RANGERS

On 23 May 2006 17:52:38 -0700, "BadgerBC"
<neilrichardson3819@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

lanman wrote:
On 16 May 2006 22:10:28 -0700, "BadgerBC"
<neilrichardson3819@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:


lanman wrote:
On Tue, 16 May 2006 22:49:11 +0100, Keith Willoughby
<keith@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

lanman <xlanmanx@xxxxxxx> writes:

On Tue, 16 May 2006 20:57:38 +0100, Keith Willoughby
<keith@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

P No Gree G O <PNGGO@xxxxxxxxx> writes:

And the fact that we've been restoring the Iraqi oil wells so that
THEY can jump start THEIR economy?

Oil production is below pre-invasion levels.

Whose fault is that?

George Bush, *** Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, L. Paul Bremer.

Sigh.


It's all very well boasting about how you're restoring Iraqi oil wells,
but without the context (they were fine before the invasion, and 3 years
later they're still broken) it's a bit of a hollow boast.

I'm not sure it was a boast, but it's not the US fault that the Sunnis
and foreigners keep blowing them up. The US prevented Saddam from
repeating his scorched earth routine from GW1, and they've done a
decent job of protecting them now. The problem, imo, is using the US
military in a police role trying to win hearts and minds prematurely.
The insurgents and those who assist them should have been first
dispatched, then win the hearts and minds. The preoccupation with
collateral damage during this war has been the cause of many failures.


You could not be more wrong. Every historian and army officer who had
served in Vietnam and ones who had studied the war (it was a
generational obsession for the Army) would disagree with you. Same
with almost any expert on counterinsurgency including the man who wrote
the book on how to wage the guerrilla warfare Mao himself. You have to
do both simultaneously to have a chance at all. That is the reason why
you've seen the unprecedented examples of senior military officers
openly criticizing the political leadership and Rumsfeld specifically.

In a war, mistakes are made. People die from those mistakes. I'd
rather the people dying from mistakes be the enemy rather than our
troops. I wonder if we would have prevailed in WW2 if we tried to
fight a sensitive war, were reluctant to have civilian casualties,
didn't want to damage the infrastructure, and tried to win hearts and
minds before the enemy was thoroughly defeated and accepted
unconditional surrender. We don't know the true motives of these
senior military officers who are openly criticizing their civilian
leadership, but I suspect much of it is personal and political.

Obviously you missed the countless indoc courses at the CGSC that have
been taught ever since 1975. Well, you can suspect the motives, but
I'd venture to guess about 95 percent of all uniformed officers in the
Army combat arms who went through CGSC, SAMS, Army War College, NDU,or
any of the Capstone courses since 1975 agree with (strange use of the
word "sensitive" btw) this approach. When I was at Leavenworth there
were 1/4 of the StaffA2 courses on insurgency and I can guarantee you
almost everyone drew the same lesson. In fact I'm finding out that the
current Army has the same lessons that we had back in 1981. If you
keep accusing generals of political motives, pretty soon you're going
to run out of generals. I don't think any of these officers (who had
served recently) are Democrats.


I am only suspicious of or disgusted with a handful of these officers
who, unprofessionally, went public with their stinging criticisms of
their leaders and who, in some cases, were also promoting their new
books. Surprise.

In fact, I am most critical of wars that are fought from the Oval
Office or the Pentagon rather then by the generals in the field. I
believe trying to achieve a political solution before winning a
military victory is a recipe for failure. I am furious that our senior
officers are reigned in by their civilian leaders and oftentimes not
allowed to win. A soldiers duty is to win. Soldiers want to win. It is
maddening when they are not allowed to do so.


Let me address the specifics. First you have a very strange idea of
how the Army's doctrine on counterinsurgency is described. It's not
just about soft only but simultaneously providing security AND winning
the hearts and minds. That is something Edward Lansdale, John Paul
Vann, and countless number of counterinsurgency theorists in the Army
and DOD have preached long before my time and accepted by almost all..
If you can provide me with some reputable (not some crackpot blogger)
sources of counterinsurgency theorists that can dispute these
longstanding doctrines, I'll be more than happy to consider them.

Second, even on practical level, you're really delusional if you think
ROE should be loosened when you have 18, 19, 20 year olds who have
nervous trigger fingers pumped up on adrenaline. Trigger discipline
(I'm not sure if it even applied to theater ADA) is a hard thing to
maintain and small unit leaders have to constantly monitor and balance
the restraint versus quick reaction and that is an art of command. You
certainly don't need some MACV-esque body count b.s. to undermine
trigger discipline up and down the line. You must've seen tv coverages
of Hue in 1968 on AFNE. How often did you see the poorly trained
conscripts "spray and pray"? We got rid of that nonsense the minute
the draft was over. Thankfully that is still the case in the Army even
now despite the miserable conditions in Iraq.


I want to see those 18, 19, and 20 year olds come home in one piece. I
don't want his/her eulogy to include the fact that although dead, a
heart and mind was won. One of the stated goals in the
counterinsurgency manual is to eliminate insurgency capability. I
don't think our military is doing that agressively enough. If the
civilian population is sympathetic to the insurgency, is providing
safe harbor, materiel support, intelligence, and even human shields,
what would you do when fired upon? How many lives of those you command
will you expend to win Iraqi hearts? Hint: you're not winning hearts,
you're winning scorn. Militants often think we're fools for the way we
fight.

I think the US made serious errors when fighting in several battles in
the Sunni triangle. In particular, the incident in Fallujah where
contractors were killed by grenades and small arms fire by a mob who
dragged their bodies from their burning vehicles, mutilated them, and
hung their charred bodies from a bridge while a crowd cheered; I would
have responded with more force than did the US.

By our rules of engagement and tactics, we constantly send the
message that we are weak willed




Third, in this age of instantaneous international media coverage, what
you're proposing will kill whatever remnants of international support
not to mention the domestic support left for the troops. Remember the
first Fallujah campaign in 2004? There was a Marine 2/LT who finished
off an insurgent who appeared to be down. There was a media
controversy and I had heated arguments with people who had never served
in line units. My point then and now is that in the fraction of a
second that took him to spot the movement and finish the insurgent off
(after long hours of continuous house-to-house fighting), no one but
that Marine had the right to make that call. To me that was an action
clearly within the ROE and accepted conventions of warfare. However, a
lot of the people who don't know a thing about what getting shot at
means believed the young Marine should've exercised restraint which was
just nonsense IMO (and I saw that clip probably about 300 times to make
sure). If we loosen the ROE and start bringing down "warheads on
foreheads" (Moseley's phrase), we might as well give up and run because
any chance we may have on winning the counterinsurgency campaign will
be flushed down the toilet as it would galvanize the remaining
population to coalesce. We may finally preserve the Iraqi polity and
sovereignty but we'd have created such an anti-US state that would make
North Korea look like Canada. The American society is generally
supportive of the troops now but if you loosen the ROE and some
inexperienced sorryass PL equivalent of William Calley decides to play
rough with Iraqi civilians, we've got a national disaster in our hands.
Thankfully, as I've seen in Quantico, the current generation of
leaders are far smarter than that.

Do you remember the ARVN Gen. Nguyen Ngoc Loan? He was the one who
famously executed a VC in Saigon during Tet. Now anyone who actually
researched his life would come to understand that while it violated the
existent understanding of how to treat the VC (if they were caught in
military operations they were accorded protections of the Geneva
Convention so there clearly was a grey area), he had been fighting
continuously for 24 hours (which speaks volumes about his own personal
bravery which was rare among the ARVN not just general officers) and
had lost scores of subordinate officers who were caught in the ambush.
In addition, throughout the war, the VC routinely would massacre
civilian relations of the police, army, politicians (e.g., in Hue) and
Gen. Loan had lost several in the previous year (and by the accounts of
the US officers who had served with him he was among the handful of
officers who weren't corrupt). That particular VC had just killed
several US troops as well just shortly before the capture near the
American embassy. However, all anyone remembers then and now is how
Gen. Loan blew the VC's brain out with his revolver. That is why we
need the strict ROE with so many young kids who now have embedded
reporters with them all the time.


The reason why we're not winning the hearts and minds is because 1) any
attempt to do so with one group say the Kurds, Shia or Sunni is seen by
others as favoring that particular group which goes directly to the
question of how we could've gotten involved in a multiethnic powder keg
in the first place,

The Kurds are not really part of the equation because they are more or
less segregated from the fray and have reasonable autonomy. The
insurgency, as you suggest, is not unified by one ideology. It is
comprised of former Saddam loyalists (the Fedayeen), Iraqi
nationalists, Islamic extremists (foreign and domestic) and some
organized crime. Some of these groups cooperated in the past, but
lately it's mostly Sunni on Shia violence. For that reason, I would
have focused on insurgency strongholds in the Sunni triangle and
bombed them into submission. When the losses were heavy enough, they
would ask to come to the table.

Well, you are misinformed. Saddam used ethnic cleansing in Mosul and
other Kurdish cities after the uprising in 1991 and now there are Shia
and Sunni living in those cities.


There may be Sunni and Shia living there, but the Kurds have mostly
unfettered self-rule at the present time. The Kurdish region has
enjoyed basic autonomy since 1991 when the US established a no-fly
zone there to prevent Saddam's military from attacking.

Bush has said the status quo with substantial Kurdish autonomy will
remain in place during the transitional period. I think the Kurds have
a strong position at this time and I can see them possibly ending up
with statehood. I consider them a small success story where a severely
oppressed people protected and eventually liberated by the US and they
actually haven't stabbed us in the back.

I also think the Kurds have more to fear from Turkey than the Shia or
Sunnis.

Unless you don't read mainstream
newspapers like NYT or The Times,

The NYT is not a *news* paper but instead a large collection of
editorial and op ed pieces. I'd rather stick pins in my eyes than read
the NYT.

<brevity snip>

As for concentrating on the Sunnis, the trouble with bombing the Sunni
Triangle is what I mentioned above regarding ROE, media, impact on US
line units, etc. We could've bombed North Vietnam back to the stone
age but who would we have left to save for democracy? I think you are
vastly underestimating how difficult it is to gain adequate
intelligence when there are so few Arabic linguists in the Army. Last
I heard was there was one per company level. That is insane when you
consider how many patrols a company would conduct if I assume active
scheduling. Intel (by this I mean local not OGA intel) is gathered by
1) having the good will of the local populace who help us out (i.e.,
the water as Mao would put it), 2) having well trained and well
disciplined small unit leaders who can maintain cool judgment in the
face of incredibly difficult challenges of working in urban areas
surrounded by sometimes hostile populace, 3) you need people who can
understand not only the language of the population but also the
cultural nuances as well. The Army is trying desperately to bring
everyone up to date on this but just lack the resources at this point.
And don't even bother to blame Clinton on that. Rumsfeld wanted to
reduce the number of active divisions from 8 to 6 before the insurgency
exploded in 2004 and Jack Reed (former combat engineer) and Chuck Hagel
(former infantry NCO) were the ones who kept grilling the SecDef about
the manpower requirements in Iraq in early 2004. It's all in the CR.

If you think this is all Sunni on Shia violence now, I suggest you read
mainstream newspapers. It's been anything but that now. A lot of
deaths now are Shia "police" gangs getting even with Sunnis. About two
weeks ago in Mosul, a Kurdish squaddie shot dead a Shia soldier who
tried to stop him from entering the hospital (while carrying his
wounded officer). This has a good potential to become an oversized
Beirut with Iran acting like Syria. The differences are Iraq is much
larger and Iran is more powerful than Syria ever was.


I would expect revenge attacks given what the Sunnis have done to the
Shia in Iraq for the last three decades under Saddam and what they
continue to do today against Shia around the globe. I'm actually
surprised the revenge attacks aren't more violent. No doubt this is
one reason that motivates the Sunnis to continue the insurgency,
because when the transitional government is finalized and the Shia are
making the rules, then the Sunni hell really begins. Nevertheless, the
ingurgent violence against Shia civilians continues, even if at a
lesser rate which I don't know to be true, and thus the Shia will
understandably retaliate when the opportunity presents itself. For
those who criticize Bush Sr. for not finishing the job, this is the
reason why. Bush Sr. wanted to maintain some semblence of parity
between Iraq and Iran so that a weakened Iraq wouldn't be attacked by
Iran.





<snip>


Every insurgency is different. Winning the hearts and minds was a
phrase coined from the successful counter-insurgency waged by the
British in Malaysia - the *only* successful counter-insurgency that
I'm aware of.

Well Gen. Edward Lansdale might have some issues with your
characterization. Huks were defeated by doing it the right way.
Combining intelligence and security efforts while trying to win the
hearts and minds at the same time.


Lansdale? Wasn't he the brains behind Operation Mongoose and the Cuban
debacle?



How did the Brits win? Well, not by trying to win hearts and minds too
soon. First, they penetrated the Malaysian Communist Party structure
to increase their intelligence capabilities. Then the British army
took large-scale military actions against the Malaysian Communist
Party while cutting supply routes.


You are leaving out scores of "winning the hearts and minds" aspects of
the Briggs Plan. If you can't find it I'll list them from Harold
Crouch, _Government and Society in Malaysia_, but I'll address the
points in passing below.

The British army also moved entire villages out. It was reported the
British army would surround a village, force all the villagers to
board trucks and then burn the village to the ground.

You really need to study counterinsurgency campaigns before grossly
oversimplifying (not to mention wrongly sequencing the events). First,
the stated goal was to PROTECT the civilian populace not merely make
examples of the rebels. When Gerald Templer implemented the Briggs
Plan, he 1) enlarged the Home Guard and properly equipped them, 2) they
were thoroughly vetted, 3) there were additional incentives provided to
the Home Guard to act as intel gatherers, 4) massive infusion of
resources to build up local political institutions. The difference of
course is that unlike us the British had centuries of experienced
colonial hands who could understand the local customs and languages.
We're entrusting an E-5 or E-6 to run several city blocs while a 2/LT
or 1/LT might be in charge of a village. That is an awful lot to ask
of our young men especially when their MOS might be 11 or 12's. We
don't have enough Civil Affairs personnel (most are reservists anyway)
because no one in their right mind thought we'd ever get involved in a
Vietnam like situation.


You're missing or ignoring my main point which is first crippling or
defeating the insurgency and removing civilian support for it. I don't
disagree with winning hearts and minds. I think that is a most vital
part of the end game. I think we mostly disagree on how and when
winning hearts and minds should be effected.


The Malaysian
Communists tried to threaten villagers to remain in their homes and
not leave, but the Brits would set the houses on fire anyway. Anyone
inside would be burned to death. (No hearts and minds here, huh?)

You are referring to 400,000 squatters in the jungle fringes who were
resettled into 500 villages. They were removed but as you've left out
the important detail.


From Lt. Thomas Willis' much cited article in the Infantry Magazine
last year:

Under the Briggs Plan resettlement initiative, approximately 400,000
squatters on the jungle fringes were forcibly resettled into
approximately 500 villages. This measure not only provided security for
the squatters, but, because of the foresight and tact with which the
operation was conducted, it earned the government the loyalty of many
squatters who had up to that point been unsure of which side would win
the conflict. The government gave each squatter family actual ownership
of its own parcel of productive farmland in addition to five months
worth of provisions to get started. On each parcel of land, the
government built a hut frame and left the supplies to finish the walls
for each squatter family to finish constructing themselves, thereby
giving the squatters an immediate sense of ownership. To provide
security along the perimeter of the villages, government forces
installed wire obstacles, and each village saw the introduction of a
police presence. Additionally, the government established potable water
supplies, schools, shops, medical clinics, and eventually electricity.
Through efforts such as these, the British earned the support of the
squatter population and managed to severely reduce the MRLA's ability
to use the squatters as logistical assets. This further isolated the
insurgents and provided the populace with a degree of security that was
unavailable until then.


This was an excellent outcome, and it was successful for a several
reasons:

- it eliminated an insurgent's stronghold by totally destroying it.
- it demonstrated unequivocally that the Brits were in charge and
calling the shots.
- it proved that civilian support for the insurgency was futile to the
point of costing your life.
- it demoralized the enemy and their supporters.
- it isolated the insurgents from their support base.


(Thomas E. Willis, "The Lessons of the Past: Successful British
Counterinsurgency Operations in Malaya, 1948-1960, _Infantry Magazine_
July-Aug. 2005, pp.29-30)


Lastly, the British started winning hearts and minds by beginning
large-scale public spending and infrastructure projects to improve the
lives of the the insurgency supporters and the rural peasants.


Look at the timeline again. If you need better sources I'd recommend
the recently published LTC John Nagl's _Counterinsurgency Lessons from
Malaya and Vietnam: Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife _. Or even John
Galula's basic text. Thankfully the new Deputy SecDef England has
recently added LTC Nagl to his staff. Nagl recounts most of the
lessons of Malaya (which I listed above) and outlines the difficulty
that faces the US Army as an institution. He derives his analytical
model from organizational theory but nevertheless his historical
analysis is very solid and is congruent with the longheld Army doctrine
on counterinsurgency which you are dismissing as "soft."


The US is taking the right steps, but they have not (according the the
British model) sufficiently defeated the insurgency militarily and are
prematurely trying to win hearts and minds with rules of engagement
that sacrifice US lives to spare Iraqi lives. With that, I vehemently
disagree. Plus, Iraq being a desert gives the US advantages that the
British in Malaysia did not have because there are no mountains or
jungles in which to hide.

Uh, that is because we don't have the linguistic nor the cultural
literacy at the line unit level. You clearly have no idea how
insurgency campaigns are waged at the unit level. I have no idea where
the heck you got your sources on this strange theory of
counterinsurgency, but I recommend you read the ones I've cited above.

Obviously these are my own theories which have not been field tested.
:-)

Since each insurgency is unique due to its political goals and theater
of operation, and since there are so very few examples of successful
counter-insurgencies, it's not like what you're presenting is a
guaranteed recipe for success. In fact, I think some of the premises
are flawed. I see too many mistakes being made in Iraq, and they just
don't pass the common sense tests.

I doubt history can produce a more determined fighter than the
Imperial Japanese during WW2. It took not one, but two atomic bombs to
force an unconditional surrender and bring the Japanese to the table.
Japan had never before been defeated. They too had a culture and
language our troops did not understand. But, they were thoroughly
defeated, and the US military under MacArthur was committed to
rebuild, so he found, with some exceptions, a malleable population.

Here's are some of the things I feel we are doing wrong in Iraq with
respect to the counter-insurgency.

1.) We continue to allow the insurgents the feeling that they can win
and we can be defeated. We do this because we are pressured to fight a
war without incurring civilian casualties
- even if the civilians are overtly supporting the insurgency.
- even if the insurgents willing sacrifice civilians to achieve their
political agenda.

2.) Because of the feeling they can win (and here win just means they
can force the US to cut and run) their morale is high and ours is less
than high. This inspires them to fight on and makes Americans restless
and less supportive.

3.) Once again, the war in Iraq is being fought from the Oval office
to the detriment of the US military which is not allowed to win.

4.) Once again, we are not responding with enough force to terrorist
attacks sending the message that terrorism works and enemy losses will
be minimal and worth the trade-off.

5.) With embedded reporters who are no friends to the US or its
efforts, we expose ourselves to far too much negative press when what
we require is more support.

6.) We are losing the propaganda war both domestically and
internationally in part due to the left-wing bias in our news media,
partisan politics in Congress, and and a divided country which puts
hatred of Bush above the good of the country. Many of these wars are
lost at home, not on the battlefield.

7.) We allowed ourselves to be manipulated by a dysfunctional
organization like the UN where totalitarian regimes have seats on the
security council and fascist governments work against us at each
juncture.

8.) We treat Islam, a fascist political ideology, with more respect
than do Muslims themselves. We stop the war during Ramadan, and allow
mosques to be used as arms depots and strongholds while Muslims
themselves have no problem blowing up mosques or committing terrorist
acts during Ramadan. In fact, Ramadan often inspires a significant
increase in terrorist attacks around the world.

9.) We've allowed ourselves to mostly fight a defensive
counter-insurgency. Contrast that with the proactive, aggressive, and
successful British actions in Malaysia.

10.) We've allowed the terrorist states of Syria and Iran to support
the insurgency with no reprocussions. I would have given each state a
warning. Then, with the first verifiable incident of their
involvement, I would have unleashed the cruise missiles at command and
control sites, military facilities, and perhaps against key political
leaders Khadafi-style.

There are others, but my bottom line is that we haven't achieved a
military victory yet, we're not on offense and agressive enough in
crippling the insurgency, and we're preoccupied with hearts and minds
prematurely.








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